Chapter 14: Easy, Dear

Krista left at noon to "get her coverage," and took the camera with her.

The room let out a sigh.

One of the hospice women pulled the ring off my finger, rubbed her thumb across it, and put it down on the apple bowl.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I couldn't look at it."

"Leave it there," I said. "I'll want it at four."

She stared at me.

"Trust me," I said.

At one o'clock there was a knock, and Trenton's mother came in without waiting for an answer.

She wore the cream suit from the gate, and she carried a flat velvet box in both hands.

She had left the camera operator at home.

"Simone, sweetheart."

She crossed the room with her arms out and held me by the shoulders.

"I owe you an apology for yesterday. That Estelle. I only wanted to help."

"It's fine."

"Is it? I couldn't sleep." She squeezed my arms. "I brought you something."

She opened the box.

Inside lay a double strand of pearls, a little yellow with age.

"They were my grandmother's. Something borrowed. Trenton said you'd like them."

"They're lovely."

"He said you'd forgive anything for a pearl." She laughed, and then heard herself and laughed again, higher. "A joke. You know how he is."

The two women from my office had stopped talking.

One of them was holding a hairbrush in midair.

Trenton's mother turned me gently by the shoulders so that she could fasten the clasp.

Her hands were cold on my neck.

"Now, I want to say something, as the mother of the groom."

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